Pigeon Forge, Tennessee draws over 11 million visitors a year to Dollywood, The Island, and the gateway towns of the Great Smoky Mountains. It's also home to one of the most interesting solid waste operations in the Southeast. And the fact that most visitors have no idea there's a landfill nearby is the point.
Waste Connections operates landfill infrastructure in the Sevier County area, and they've done something that deserves recognition: they've managed odor in a mountain valley — one of the hardest environments for air quality management — well enough that a world-class tourist destination operates right next door without issue.
That doesn't happen by accident. It happens through investment, operational discipline, and a genuine commitment to being a good neighbor.
The Challenge
Mountain valleys are among the most difficult environments for managing landfill and composting odors. The Smoky Mountains create natural bowls where temperature inversions — layers of warm air trapping cooler air below — hold gases close to the ground. A facility that might dissipate odor quickly on flat terrain can produce persistent, ground-level plumes in valley geography. Add summer humidity and heat, which accelerate biological decomposition and increase volatile organic compound generation, and you have a recipe for complaints.
On top of that, Sevier County generates enormous volumes of organic waste. Millions of tourists means millions of restaurant meals, hotel room turnovers, and event cleanups. The waste stream is disproportionately heavy on food waste — the most odor-intensive fraction of municipal solid waste.
Most communities facing this combination would struggle. Sevier County turned it into a success story.
What Good Operations Look Like
Waste Connections' approach in the Sevier County area reflects the kind of operational discipline that separates excellent facilities from problematic ones. The tools aren't exotic — they're well-established engineering practices executed consistently:
Aggressive daily cover. The single most effective odor control measure at any landfill is keeping the working face small and covering exposed waste promptly. Facilities that cut corners on daily cover — waiting until end of day, leaving waste exposed over weekends, using inadequate soil thickness — generate the vast majority of odor complaints industry-wide. Getting this right requires staffing, equipment availability, and a culture that treats cover as non-negotiable.
Gas collection and destruction. Modern gas collection systems — networks of vertical wells and horizontal collectors connected to a vacuum header — capture landfill gas before it migrates to the surface. The gas is either flared or, increasingly, converted to renewable natural gas or electricity. A well-maintained system with adequate well density and proper vacuum management can capture 85%+ of generated gas. The key word is "maintained" — gas systems require constant attention as the waste mass settles, new cells are constructed, and collection infrastructure ages.
Leachate management. Leachate — the liquid that percolates through decomposing waste — is a significant odor source if not managed aggressively. Proper collection, storage, and treatment or disposal keeps leachate from becoming an ambient air quality issue.
Buffer zones and site design. Facility layout matters. Orienting active working areas away from prevailing wind directions toward populated areas, maintaining vegetated buffer zones that absorb and disperse gases, and using terrain features as natural barriers all reduce off-site impact without requiring exotic technology.
The Composting Connection
Sevier County also deserves credit for one of the most ambitious composting programs in the country. Sevier Solid Waste, Inc. (SSWI) operates what it describes as the largest mixed co-composting facility in the nation, processing waste from Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, Gatlinburg, Sevier County, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The facility diverts roughly 70% of incoming waste from landfill disposal through composting and recycling.
That's a remarkable diversion rate for a mixed municipal waste stream. Most communities aspire to 30-40% diversion and celebrate when they hit it. Sevier County nearly doubles that — and they're doing it with a tourism-driven waste stream that's notoriously difficult to sort and process.
Large-scale composting generates odor by nature — biological decomposition produces ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and volatile organic compounds that humans can detect at parts-per-billion concentrations. Managing that at the scale SSWI operates requires enclosed or covered composting areas with engineered ventilation, biofilter systems that use microbial activity to break down odor compounds, careful temperature and moisture monitoring with consistent turning schedules, and windrow design that maximizes aeration and minimizes anaerobic pockets.
The fact that Dollywood's water park and resort complex — where guests spend entire days outdoors — operates within the same valley as this infrastructure speaks to how well the odor management is executed.
A Model for Tourism Communities
Sevier County isn't the only tourist destination that has to manage solid waste infrastructure in close proximity to its economic engine. Coastal resort towns, mountain ski communities, and theme park corridors across America face the same challenge: visitors generate waste, waste requires infrastructure, and infrastructure requires management that doesn't compromise the visitor experience.
What makes the Sevier County model worth studying is that they didn't solve the problem by pushing infrastructure far away — there isn't room in a mountain valley to do that. They solved it through operational excellence at the facilities themselves. That's a more scalable answer than hoping for geographic buffers that may not exist.
Communities like Panama City Beach, Myrtle Beach, Branson, and the Lake Tahoe basin face similar dynamics. The playbook is available: invest in gas collection, maintain aggressive cover practices, design facilities with downwind communities in mind, and treat odor control as a core operational function rather than an afterthought.
The Industry Can Do This
It's worth pausing on what the Sevier County success story means for the broader waste industry. Landfill odor complaints are among the most common environmental grievances in America. Communities near poorly operated facilities suffer real quality-of-life impacts — reduced property values, health concerns, and the daily indignity of not being able to open their windows.
But those outcomes are not inevitable. They're the result of operational choices. When waste companies invest in their facilities — when they staff adequately, maintain equipment, monitor proactively, and treat the surrounding community as stakeholders rather than complainants — the results speak for themselves.
Waste Connections' work in the Dollywood corridor demonstrates that landfills and communities can coexist, even in the most challenging environments. It's not magic. It's competence, consistency, and giving a damn.
Where We Stand
EPR Foundation believes the waste industry should celebrate its successes as loudly as critics highlight its failures. Sevier County and Waste Connections have built something worth studying — a model where world-class tourism and responsible waste management share a valley in the Smoky Mountains without conflict.
We'd like to see more of this. More investment in gas collection and cover practices at facilities nationwide. More communities partnering with their waste operators on solutions rather than fighting them in court. And more recognition that the companies and municipalities doing this work well deserve to be held up as examples.
Dolly Parton built a theme park that celebrates the best of Appalachian culture. The waste professionals operating next door are keeping the air clean enough for 11 million visitors to enjoy it. That's a partnership worth talking about.